32. - Jason -
Chapter thirty-two
- Jason -
T he sound of the door closing and thoughts he didn’t recognize pulled Jason’s attention from the cards in his hand and his brother at his side. A new boy walked through the doorway, the fluorescent lights flickering overhead. All eyes in the room turned to him, hollow, barely a spark of interest before turning away again.
But Jason was interested. Someone new hadn’t been admitted to the facility in what felt like a very long time. He watched the boy approach their table. His thoughts were scattered, scared, though he didn’t look it.
Hesitantly, the boy pulled out a chair, the metal legs scraping on the linoleum floor, and he sat. His head was freshly shaved. He looked like them, kind of. His hair would be black if it were allowed to grow out again. His skin was darker, though. Their skin had a sickly pallor to it, the colour of their veins snaking under its thinness. They hadn’t seen sun in over a year at least, hadn’t been outside in just as long. This newcomer obviously had.
Kayden looked at him with eyes like bruises. Jason was sure his looked the same.
“What’s your names?” the new boy said. His voice was hard, firm.
“No names. Numbers.” Kayden’s voice was a rasp from misuse. Maybe from screaming.
The newcomer looked to his own gown, the number 28 stitched on his right upper breast in dark blue thread, then he looked back up to theirs.
“21 and 22. I can see that. But what’s your real names?”
Their eyes darted to the cameras in every ceiling corner, watching the “community space,” as it was labeled, only to be used during their free time for “community bonding”. But none of that happened. They couldn’t speak freely, and there was no community in this space. It was sterile, full of sadness. Hopelessness.
“I’m 21.” His voice was just as hoarse as his brother’s.
“And I’m 22.”
“Okay,” the new boy conceded, his mouth setting grimly. “What card game are you guys playing?”
“Cribbage. Do you want to play? We can modify the rules for three people.” It was a mouthful of a sentence. He wasn’t used to saying more than a few words, and they tangled on his tongue, clumsy off his lips.
With tanned hands, the boy reached for the deck. He was searching for specific cards before spreading them in front of him – an Ace, 1, 8, 3, 8, 5, then another 1 and 8.
“Did you know you can assign numerical values to letters?” His voice was pitched low.
He and his brother stared at the cards spelling out his name, though they’d already heard it. Archer. His brother pulled the deck to himself, doling out a King, an Ace, then 2, 5, 4, 5, 1, and 4. Kayden .
Then it was Jason’s turn. He arranged the cards to spell out his name, placing the Jack of Hearts down first. When Archer nodded, he folded them back into the deck quickly.
“Where are we?” Archer asked them.
Jason and Kayden just shrugged.
“Are you twins? ”
They nodded in unison.
“Why are we here?”
Kayden shrugged again.
“We’re gifted,” Jason huffed. “But I actually think they mean cursed.”
It was louder than he’d meant to be, the familiar anger pebbling his cold flesh. He could see heads turning to their tables, Number 18 barely able to contain the fire inside her, her skin lighting up like an ember.
Before she could ignite further, four lab techs burst in through the door. Jason tried to shut out their internal dialogue, didn’t want to know.
“Community time is over. Line up for escort back to your cells.” The tech already had a syringe in 18’s neck, and she fell limp where she’d been sitting on the floor. The puzzle piece she’d been holding smoked as it dropped, singed.
“Welcome to hell on earth,” Jason said to Archer, getting up from the table and letting the chair topple behind him. “I hope you have a high pain threshold.”
Then it was just the noxious smell of bleach and pain. Needles, metal trays, white hospital gowns, IVs, screams, hands all over his body and utter hopelessness.
The images flashed through Jason’s mind like he had an old-school View-Master pressed to his face. The only difference was that he had no control over the speed at which the images changed, and each one was more haunting than the last.
Corey must have recognized Jason’s panic, because she took his sweaty face in her hands and stared down his blown-out pupils. “You’re okay. Jase. You’re right here. You’re safe. Kayden’s safe.”
He was shaking, he could feel that much, his body vibrating against the vinyl of the café booth. But her presence did little to sooth his spiralling mind, even as she held him.
Jason stared at the crib board that Kayden had thrown down onto their table. “Is this a joke?” he choked out.
The grimace on Kayden’s face told him it was not, in fact, a joke. Jason was on the brink of getting up from the booth and bolting, when Kayden’s jaw hardened with determination. Through hyperventilating breaths, Jason realized that his demons weren’t only his own. They were his brother’s too, and Kayden looked like he needed this, needed to take back what had been taken from him.
Crib had been their game. Their parents had taught them how to play. When they had been in the facility, locked in their own individual, white-walled rooms, they’d had free time for exactly one hour a day in the common space. Most of them were too dead inside to do anything other than sit and stare at the wall. For ten years, an hour of crib was the only thing they had. The only thing keeping them from the brink of absolute insanity.
“Can you play cribbage?” Kayden asked Corey.
“I can only play Go Fish or Poker.”
“It’s usually a two-player game, but we can modify it to the three-person version. Jason will teach you.”
Jason swallowed past the hard lump clogging his throat. He so rarely had flashbacks while awake that when he did, it left him ragged and torn. It felt impossible to break out of the trap in his mind—cold, clinical and empty, just like his childhood. But he leaned back, and with trembling hands, he dealt the deck and explained the rules to Corey, his voice becoming steadier as he went.
Unlike with everything else she’d learned quickly, Corey seemed to have a difficult time remembering the scoring, fumbling her hand each round. Jason was only half paying attention anyway, still halfway trapped in his mind, the thick smell of butter and coffee doing little to neutralize the Proustian moment.
Once Archie had joined their table, they’d used the cards to create a method of covert communication. And after Archie joined, some other kids had followed. The ability to pass secret messages via cards had been the nucleus of their eventual uprising, that and Archie and Calyx’s gifts. Calyx, with her gift of fire, had made the ultimate sacrifice, levelling the building to the ground and trading her life for their freedom.
Since then, Jason had spent the next decade dedicating every waking minute to repressing any whisper of memory from their time in captivity. For the most part, he was successful. Losing himself to work helped during the day. He couldn’t control his mind at night, but he had liquor to help him with that.
Kayden had effectively thrown a grenade into all his efforts, though his brother seemed unperturbed by the whole ordeal, collecting another 121 points and taking his second win.
Corey gave a frustrated groan and took a feral bite from her croissant, spraying flakey pastry all over the table. It almost made Jason smile, despite the havoc in his head.
“It doesn’t make any sense! The cards I get just don’t add up to 31,” she said, mouth still full.
“You have to make them add up to 31, Little Fox. That’s the point of playing,” his brother laughed.
“Thank you for that wonderful tip, Kay. I must have missed that point over the last hour.” She took a sip from the latte that must have been cold by now, having sat on the table for so long.
“Do you want another one?” Jason asked her, his hand squeezing her thigh under the table.
“Nah, you make them better anyway.” She leaned into him, nuzzling her nose against the ridge of his jaw in an unexpected display of affection, and a deeply suppressed part of him preened at her praise. He turned his head to breathe her in deeper.
He caught Kayden in his periphery, an I told you so playing around his eyes.
“Where did you go earlier?” she asked him.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now.” Thanks to you , he thought .
“We used to play crib in the facility,” Kayden said.
Jason cut him a shocked look, his heart missing a beat.
“I guess I should tell you I told her?” His brother had his lip between his teeth, but there was no guilt there.
“Everything?”
“No,” Kayden shook his head, “but enough.”
He didn’t know if what he was feeling was relief or regret, regret that he hadn’t been the one to share it with Corey after she’d opened up to him, or relief that he wouldn’t have to.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said into his neck. “Unless you want to. I know sometimes it just makes you feel crazier saying it out loud, but it can be healing too when the right person is listening. If I could put everyone who hurt you in a scary torture dungeon, I would, Jase.”
“That’s not your job, sweetheart.”
“Well, I don’t currently have a job, so if you’re in the market for a hound dog, I’m happy to be your weapon of choice.”
“We’ll take that under advisement.” Kayden was back to shuffling the deck. He looked overly contemplative at her request, and Jason didn’t like that. He wanted Corey as far away from their past as possible. “Another round?” he asked, already cutting the cards to deal.
“Why bother?” Corey pouted. “You’re just going to win again.”
“I didn’t take you for such a sore loser. There was bound to be something you’re bad at.”
“Hey, I’m not bad at cards. This game is just stupid. You should see me at poker.”
“If you’re that confident, we’ll get you a laptop and you can start making us millions on online poker games. How about that?”
“Us?” Corey pulled her face from Jason’s shoulder, and the loss of contact left him colder. “You two are already rich! I need the money.”
“For what?” Jason asked. They were dancing around the inevitable daily. They truly didn’t know what Corey’s expectations were of this relationship they’d fallen into. Jason still doubted she would be okay with their profession, even after the last 48 hours.
“I don’t know. Like… things.” She waved her hand in the air. “I can’t just sit around all day and make you buy me everything.”
“Isn’t that what every girl wants?”
“I’m not like other girls.”
“No, Little Fox.” Kayden’s smile was wolfish. “You’re worse.”
She crossed her arms, kicking him under the table.
“Feisty, feisty. Was she this gutsy when you had her hanging from your ropes, Jase?” Corey’s cheeks heated instantly at Kayden’s question.
“No, she was rather submissive, actually.”
“She’s like that with me, too. She’s all talk until my hands are at her throat, and then there’s a lot of begging, isn’t there?”
“Okay, this is crossing a line!” Corey’s eyes were wide, and Kayden was grinning smugly. “I’m going to pee. Do not trade notes on our sex lives while I’m gone. Or you know what? Fuck it, trade notes. I’m the one who benefits in the end.”
She straddled Jason in the booth to get out, extremely flustered, but then she stopped to drop a chaste kiss on his lips. It settled in him like a whisper of wind, softening his hard edges.
But the comfort was gone just as quick. As she walked away, the noise picked up. The contrast was deafening, a crescendo of sound he’d gotten too comfortable without. The farther she got, the louder it got in his head, enough that he couldn’t make out a single thread of thought.
Kayden must have been feeling it too, but it didn’t stop that smug, infuriating look he had on.
“Spit it out.”
“Oh, I really love to say I told you so.”
Jason rolled his eyes and reached for Corey’s cold coffee, taking a sip and sifting through the mental conversations around him. A lot of stupidity .
But there, a thread of thought too familiar to be coincidental—a description of the girl who had just left their booth and a description of them.
“Something’s wrong,” he said to Kayden, who looked like he was also scanning through the noise.
He zeroed in on the man the thoughts were coming from by the front door, glancing from the back hall that presumably led to the bathrooms and then back to the front door again, itching in his chair. The man’s thoughts were a jumble of auburn hair and violence.
“Kay, get the information while you can hear it.” He was out of the booth and down the hall before his brother could confirm that he understood.
Jason slammed the door open to the women’s bathroom and stormed through, internal silence greeting him when he entered.
A man had his hands on her, one pinning her hands behind her back, the other hand holding a knife to her throat. Jason was already reaching for his gun, abject terror passing over him. He was vulnerable enough from his earlier flashbacks that he was having a hard time remaining calm. Corey had hooked her claws into his hindbrain, something intrinsic in him recognizing that she was now fundamental to his survival, and the beast inside him was pushing at the seams.
That realization may have shaken him more than the current predicament.
He blinked and rearranged his face into a terrifying sneer, hoping like hell the guy hadn’t picked up his initial reaction.
“That’s mine,” Jason said through his teeth.
“That’s the point,” the man behind her replied. “Now you’re going to cooperate and come with us, or we’re going to have some fun with your little friend here. She’s pretty, isn’t she?” He grazed her jawline with his thumb. Corey was scared, her pupils so wide there was barely any blue left.
Jason lifted his gun. He knew he was a perfect shot. But the man, burly and wide, with a thick, wiry beard covering half his face, pressed the blade into Corey’s throat a little more, and blood dribbled from the cut there, slow and languid.
“Do you think the bullet will land before I cut her head off?” It would, but not before he did irreparable damage.
But still, Jason didn’t drop the gun. “Take the blade away from her, or I’ll use it to cut the skin from your bones.”
The man just dug a little deeper with the knife, eliciting a broken whimper from Corey.
Fuck, fuck, fuck . This was why she was so dangerous. With her around, they couldn’t see their threats.
But Corey was strong, and they’d taught her well.
“Okay,” Jason said, lowering his arm slowly. “Okay, you’ve got me.” He locked eyes with Corey, trying like hell to confirm that she’d be able to get out of this quickly. “I’ll come with if you leave her here.”
Jason tossed his gun towards the man’s leather boots. He was in cargo pants and a matching cargo jacket. Jason realized he’d seen the man walk in earlier, but he’d been too distracted by Corey and the fucking card game and his own fucking trauma to notice that the man had never come back into the café from the bathrooms.
The gun landed close to him, but just far enough that the man had to reach a foot out to kick it further away. And with his focus shifting forward with his movement, the pressure on the knife loosened. Corey didn’t wait. She reared her head back, smashing the back of her head into his face, and his nose crunched audibly. The metallic tang of blood filled the air quickly.
The guy dropped the knife to grab his face.
Rookie move. He was untrained. Jason didn’t wait to consider that, his second gun already unleashing a bullet.
He hit his mark; the man crumpling to the floor like a sack of flour, and Corey sprung at Jason. Pulling her to him, his eyes tracked up and down her face, looking for more damage. He found nothing else and released a long breath, his shoulders softening, some of the tension leaving his body even as she kept shaking.
He cared. He cared too damn much.
Her beautiful eyes were still wide and wild, looking up at him.
“Still think you want to catch the bad guys?”
She shuddered. “He said nothing to me. He overtook me so quickly that I didn’t know what was happening. And then the knife. I wasn’t prepared. After all this training, I still failed.”
“No. You got yourself out of this situation. If you hadn’t hit him, I wouldn’t have been able to take the shot.” A tear was tracking down her face, and he wiped it away.
“He told me he’d kill me if I screamed. I didn’t think you’d know to come.”
“I’ll always come for you.”
"Jason, I was scared. Like, really scared."
He’d been too, for her, as if she hadn’t seen it on his face earlier. He let her touch him, let her stroke her fingers along his skin. He shivered, and it wasn’t from revulsion. She was the only one he could tolerate touch from now.
The slamming of the bathroom door broke their tender moment. Two more men, dressed similarly to the dead one on the floor, fought each other to get into the bathroom.
“Seriously? Who are these idiots?” Jason shot each one of them in the head with the gun still in his hand before they even made it through the doorway.
Kayden came in right after them, and the sounds of all hell breaking loose in the café finally breached Jason’s panic. Now that he had his hands on Corey, the rest of the world was coming back into focus, like cracking the surface after a long dive .
“We have to go. There’s a price on Corey’s head.” Kayden was frantic. “I cleared four in the café. They’re a gang of hired mercenaries, and more are coming for back up. One called it in before I could kill him.”
“Well, they’re really shit at it. Whoever hired them should ask for their money back.” Jason said, kicking the arm in his way and stepping over the rest of the body to get out of the bathroom, pulling a shell-shocked Corey behind him.
Kayden led them through the kitchens and out the back door, his phone already in his hand. “Archie, we’ve been compromised. There are mercenaries contracted to take in Corey as ransom for me and Jason.”
“It’s fucking Kreig.” Jason yelled to be heard through the phone. “Fuck, or Wilkinson, or fucking both of them! I knew I needed to get a read on him at the gala.”
“Jase, shut the fuck up. Stop spiraling. We need to get home, and then we can debrief.”
Kayden flipped the phone to speaker. “Arch, we walked here. I don’t want them tracing us back to the condo.”
“Take a cab to the penthouse. I’ll route its GPS, make it circle the city first. Go one block south and two blocks west. Keep me on the line.”
Jason and Kayden walked at a brisk pace, not risking the scene it would make if they started sprinting. All three of them were in boots, jeans and leather jackets.
Corey didn’t say a word as they dragged her around downtown and hailed a taxi. Kayden still had the phone in his hand, taking it off speaker as they got in the car. Jason’s blood was a roiling cauldron of horror and thrill. As worried as he was for Corey’s safety, Jason also loved the comfort and adrenaline of a good kill. It was the blood lust that kept him going after all these years.
And he’d just added three more bodies to his long, long list.